Update after a long while

 We are still going strong.
And still staying home sort of. As you probably know we are doing many virtual titles. So we train tricks at home, and put them on video in order to get a working title!

Super many fun. With Lucky I do virtual runs/walks. After his condition in januari I was very scared to do anything with him, and I know the vet approved he can do fitness and running like before, it is sometimes scary.

So we don't do runs, but we do walks/speedwalks instead.
We did the do more with your dog 2 k9 speedwalk, and we did the virtual Grand Canyon, so we had 2 beautfifull medals and a great certificate!

We are now in the middle of a virtual Kruger Park race, and there is still a Bob Ross happy little 5k medal in the mail.

So we are not at the dogshows, but still very active.

Quick update

 No updates is such a long time.

I'm so sorry.

We are doing great here at Glamourace Collies.

Tricks and Fitness are now our current main goals.

We did participate in some online dog shows and Lucky gained a Best of Breed that way, but it is not the real deal.

Scarlett had a pyometra so 15 days ago she had surgery, but all is looking fab.

She is happy and healty again.

Since we went into this corona period, Star gained level 3, and 4 in Canine fitness, and Canine Fitness Champion, she is the first rough collie Ever!! to get this title.

She also gained her advanced and expert trick title.

Emmy, Vivien and Scarlett!!!!! gained their novice trick titles.

Leia got Fitness level 1, and trickdog novice and intermediat.

Emmy won in a photocontest!

Leia was nr 1 in the competition "Mooiste hond van Nederland 2020" for our area Sudwest-Fryslân.

Judy did an online fitness challenge called ob-STAY-cle.

We cannot wait for things to go more normal and to be in the showring again, but for now we are trying to keep happy and healthy and just do lots of fun training.

Fitness with Leia day 14

The last day

I hope you liked the video's, and I hope you liked watching what we do on a normal base with our dogs.

All our collies and borzoi are doing those exercises, and not all in order, and not all to get a title, but we like being active with our dogs.

This last one is crawl tunnel,

And I made Leia crawl under 2 chairs, I encouraged her with cookies and praise 

Lots of dogs find it very weird going under something so  this can take a while before they get the hang of it.

Leia also wasn't doing this in 1 practice.

Maybe you get interested in training fitness with your dog aswell, on facebook I have my spark team

Lucky pink paws   you can go there and get more info on getting a fitness title.

It is a lot of fun, and it is really great for bonding with your dog.

I'm very proud that my furry friends are so easy with exercise and video taking.

Fitness with Leia day 13

We are almost done with all the exercises towards Do more with your dog Fitness level 1

Only 2 exercises

Today we have fitbones

I used all my low inflatables for this.

Cushions and pillows will also work.

Let your dog walk over it in a slow manner.

Put your equiptment in different patterns to make the exercise more difficult

Tomorrow is the last day............

Fitness with Leia day 12

Walk a line of platforms.

I'm a lucky girl, because my dad made 2 platforms for me, but when I did my exercises with Star I did not have these pieces of equiptment.

So I used chairs.

Now I used 2 chairs and my 2 platforms.

Leia is not afraid to go over the platforms, but that is because we did so much exercises in the whelping box, so this was very easy to train.

I placed my platforms in a way that she needed to think on the landing, but close enough that she would not make any weird jumping, the exercise is called Walk a line of platforms, not jump.

I lured with a cookie, and she was going great.

I hope you are all still liking this and following 

see you tomorrow 

Fitness with Leia day 11

Ladder work.

Use a regular ladder, or a fancy rainbow ladder, or cavaletti's. Even can's with brooms will do the job.

Make sure your dog goes over the rungs, in a nice even way.

As you can see, Leia needs to really lift her paws, so this works her muscless, and she has to think about where she places her feet.

Ofcourse make sure you praise your dog as he goes over the rungs.

We are almost finished with our exercises for CCF1

Tomorrow again a video 

Fitness with Leia day 10

This exercise is scattered sticks.

Get your cavalleti sticks, brooms, other sticks, hoops what ever you can find,

just place it on the floor, no need for a pattern.

This makes the dog think on where he needs to put his paws.

Leia thinks this is pretty easy, 

Are you checking back tomorrow? 

Fitness with Leia day 9

Today is wall stand,

So your dog needs to stand against the wall, this is real great for the back end of the dog.

I lured Leia up, by putting a little treat in front of her nose, and then very slowly move it higher until she needed to come up and lean against the wall.

This can be a bit weird at first but if you keep calm, and keep encouraging with a cookie and a happy voice, your dog will do this in the first session of training!

Tomorrow another video

Fitness with Leia day 8

Paws up on a platform

This looks a lot like yesterday! Only now I use a little stool, you can also use a stack of books, a small fitness step for humans, a brick, you name it.

And again simply lure the dog up with a cookie.

Leia had really beautifull posture on this one.

Are you following along????

Tomorrow I have again a video for you 

Fitness with Leia day 7

Today is paws up disc.

I used a wobble cushion that is for people gym.

You can also use a sofa cushion or a real dog fitness inflatable.

Simply lure the dog up with a cookie

Leia was doing this since she was only a few weeks old, we put those pieces of equiptment in our whelping box, so this was not to hard.

See you tomorrow 

Fitness with Leia day 6

Jump through a hoop!!

Again I used a tug toy to get Leia enthousiastic, and a lot of praise aswell.

Jumping through a hoop can be intimidating for dogs, so first lure your dog through when you just hold the hoop up. Don't put any height on it.

After some great repetitions, you can slowly increase heigt, keep encouraging an praising, and if they get a bit scared, just lower the hoop again.

If you are enthousiastic and encouraging, this trick will be no problem

Tomorrow another video for you! 

Fitness with Leia day 5

Stretches

Just like the passive range of motion is this an exercise you need to be very carefull with. Also no jerking on limbs, but gentle stretching. And never ever on cold muscles. You really need to warm the dogs up.

So I did the stretching after some workouts.

Again a little bit longer video.

See you tomorrow

Fitness with Leia day 4

Nose touch!!!!

Leia adores her tug toy, so to get the best nose touch I use that toy.

To start with this exercise you need food and a clicker or marker word.

Hold out your hand, if your dog gets interested in your hand click and treat.

Then hold out your hand again, if they are interested in your hand for a few reps, then wait until they touch your hand and then click and treat.

If your dog is not interested in your hand, put a small piece of food inbetween your middle and ring finger. When they try to get that piece of food out, say touch and release the food.

I will play tug with Leia in between the nose touches to keep her energetic and engaged.

I hope you will check back tomorrow

Fitness with Leia day 3

Passive range of motion.

This can be a little bit harder for some dogs, because some don't like to be touched on their feet.

Leia also tought this was a bit weird.

This exercise is very relaxing, you manually rotate the limbs of your dog through their complete range of motion.

Don't just pull and jerk on limbs, that will only cause damage, but slow movement is really relaxing for the dog.

This video is rather long and if you like to know more about this exercise I suggest looking through the site and look for the stretching video of Scarlett.

Tomorrow we have a bit more action again

Fitness with Leia day 2

Day 2, are you ready. Leia defenitly is.

Today is Bar jump. 

We do have a lot of equiptment, but buckets and a broom will work just as well.

Begin with the bar on the ground, encourage your dog and praise when he get's over de bar. (and give a treat or toy)

Then slowly start raising the bar, and when they jump over, praise and treat!! This should not be so hard.

When I have a cookie Leia does this pretty well, but if I have her favorite tug toy, she performs even better.

Will you check back tomorrow for another exercise??

Fitness with Leia

Now we had our pictures with the fountains, I wanted to show you some training with Leia.

I hoped by now there would be some dogshows, but things are looking, well, not to positive.

But we keep positive!!!

Leia and I have been working on our Fitness title.

Star has all her fitness title's and we are working on our fitness champion title, and Scarlett also has her fitness title level 1. (CCF1)

As a coach I wanted to motivate the students to get active with their dog, and as an extra motivater I did all the exersices with Leia.

And as I now have all the video's I'd like to show you the video's aswell 

If you like to join, you are welcome, and if you like to get a title, just contact us and I'm glad to help out.

Here is the first video.

This is a substitution for walking on a treadmill. I do have a treadmill, and we use it very often, but I find it also very important to walk the dogs outside, next to my bike, or next to the step scooter.

Jogging is also very nice.

Leia has been running next to my step scooter for a few weeks now. We slowly build up the km's. Currently we are not even up to 1km. For me it is the most important to get her moving correctly.

Check back tomorrow for a next fitness video

 

Fountains in Fryslân

The last one, Leeuwarden, Ljouwert.

In 2018 Leeuwarden was cultural capital of Europe, so all the 11 cities got a fountain.

Also there was a lot of cultural stuff hapening in Leeuwarden and the whole province.

Because of the Corona virus there are no events, workshops or dogshows, and I wanted to show Leia so much.

I had this plan of visiting the fountains last year, but it was just an idea.

Ofcourse the first weeks of Corona Lockdown we did not go out. We went only for dogwalks close to home and the supermarket, avoiding people as much as we could.

In the last weeks of the Lockdown we decided that if we took distance and we played safe, we might be able to visit the fountains. 

We decided to take pictures of multiple fountains in one day making sure we would get to all of them before restaurants and such where opening up again. 

And we did it. Only 1 day before most of the catering industy would open up again we went to Franeker, Dokkum and ending up in Leeuwarden. Playing it safe and really not getting close to people as we want to be over with the virus asap, and have a normal live again, with events and dogshows, meeting up with our dog show friends.

This fountain is called Love, and it is Huge, really.

And sadly it was out. ( I saw this one in 2018 and then it was on and it is really pretty)

And because of the nice wheater and the fact it was not on, there where people sitting against this big masterpiece.

We really liked going to all the fountains, I don't think in a normal show year we would have been to all of them.

Because normally we love to be at home when we don't show, or go for walks in the wood.

But now times are so different.

As I write this we are not having dogshows. And we still take walks close to our home. Because tourism is now starting up and the woods we normally go to will be full of people.

We still try to maintain a social distance, but we sure hope to go back to normal as quick as possible.

I hope you all liked the pictures of Leia, and maybe I inspired people to go visit them too.

If you want to know more about the fountains you can visit This link and it will take you to the website with all the fountains and all the adresses.

My favorite fountain is Ijlst, but I do really love Leeuwarden.

Sloten and Bolsward are also on my toplist.

Maybe we will do some cultural picture taking again, it will probably will not be a weekly topic again. We will see!! 

Fountains in Fryslân

Nr 10, We have 11 cities in Fryslân, I know some of them are almost smaller then where I live myself, but they are cities

This week it is Dokkum, the only one that is in Dutch language exactly the same as in Frisian.

This one is called de Ijsfontein and like Franeker, mist is coming out of this one.
We went to this fountain the same day as we visited Franeker, so we made sure things where not being to hot for Leia, so cool water handy and airco in the car.

We found a nice bench in front of the fountain and I wanted Leia to stand on there like on a show podium. We are afterall show people.

She jumped on (ungroomed) and she stood very pretty so I did not bother with her paws being in the exact spot. I found she was pretty enough just as she is.

The fountain is pretty big and there is a fog coming out all the time, but on the pictures that is hard to tell. A bit sad that I was wearing a grey shirt and Leia is blue merle, ( I love blue merle, but it has no contrast with the fountain)
But I was asuming the fountain was white, I was wrong.

For us Dokkum is pretty far, so I only went there twice (now three times) and it is a very narrow place, we had a very hard time getting out of Dokkum.

Now this is almost the last one.

You probably can guess where we are next week.

Fountains in Fryslân

Slowly we are getting to all of the fountains of the Frisian 11steden.

This time we went to Franeker (Frentsjer)
And when we went there it was a very warm day, actually warmer then expected so yay for airco in the car.

We also took loads of cool water so we could refresh Leia whenever we wished, because dog health and welfare is The most important.

The fountain is called De Oortwolk, and as Franeker has a real museum to do with Astronomie, this was inspired on Astronomie.

We had to locate a bit where we could stand as we did not want to get wet, like we did in Workum.

Water is not coming out all the time so when we first came there we where almost dissapointed it was not on.

Later when we got to the fountain we found out a mist or a fog would come out instead of loads of water, and then we took pictures and it stopped again.

Also there where many people watching behind the camera, so Leia is looking everywhere, but not direct in the camera. She wanted so badly to go over and get a cuddle, and that is not ideal ofcourse in Corona times.

Look at her smile, she so much likes people, but these are not the times to get over to people and get hugs.......

Did I really like this fountain, mmmm. I don't think it is the prettiest of them all, you probably know how I like Ijlst. There is only 2 to go so then you can decide for yourselve

Next week another fountain

Fountains in Fryslân

From IJlst to Sloten, Sleat in my language.

And from a huge one to another large work of art.

This one is called "Kieviet"  because of the bird the girl is having in her hands.

This one is also one of my favourites. I has a lot of buckets, with a man standing on it, and the man is holding the girl on his shoulders, and the girl has a bird in her hands.

Not really a lot of impressing water coming out, but it is beautifull sculpted. 

And it was super easy to find!!! 

It was a hard time getting the whole fountain on it!

This was already fountain nr 8, only 3 to go being, Franeker, Dokkum and Leeuwarden. I've been to all the places before as I did the traditional cycling tour de 11steden tocht, as many Frisians, but this trip takes us to a lot of unknown stuff.

Next week Leia will be visiting one of the other fountains, maybe you can already take a guess.

I hope you will check in next week.......